Wednesday, September 16, 2015

The Czech Story on ARD

This afternoon (17:51 local time), the ARD (the Channel One state-run TV news media folks) put up another story entitled: "Refugee workers in Eastern Europe be a shame of one's own country".

The news report (in audio) put a number of words into the introduction on their site.  The commentary was mostly how Czech and Slovakia helped to stop the German idea of quotas on EU members and how this was supported by a large voting public within each country.  But the journalist wanted everyone to know that younger people within both countries are against xenophobic feelings and support the German idea of quotas.

So, the story went up by 17:51 and two comments went quickly into the comments area....one was highly negative about the slant of the story, and the other commentary noted that either you recognize European values or you start an entirely new EU with clearer and more defined rules than what was in place for EU version 1.0.

Then, it happened.

18:18 local time.....barely 27-odd minutes after the story went up.....they shut down the commentary. Moderation issues apparently.  The words?  Dear users, because of the high number of comments is currently overloaded our moderation. Therefore, this message can not be commented on at the moment. We ask for your understanding. Sincerely The Moderation

Yeah, you have to severely moderate things, or some harsh words get spoken and folks would be accused of hate-commentary. Yeah, that's how slanted the woven-story has become.  ARD is almost like a magnet now.....drawing criticism from the public and doing their best to project the story.

No comments: